Senior American military officials Wednesday threw cold water on reports of an attempted coup d'etat in Qatar, nerve center for the U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

An influential Web site that tracks Middle East media reported on Monday, Aug.3, that "various Arab websites are reporting on the sudden firing of senior Qatari military officials after they staged a failed coup attempt."

The Persian Gulf state is home to the U.S. Central Command. American warplanes and drones also fly from a Qatar air base.

Newly minted CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus gets a chance to see if his Iraq magic has any chance of working elsewhere next week, when he travels to Islamabad amid a swirl of negotiations aimed at getting the Taliban to halt its Afghan insurgency.

According to some reports, the U.S. itself is ready to talk directly with the Taliban in hopes  of driving a wedge between it and al Qaeda, which it has hosted since the 1990s. 

But while the Taliban was talking in the Pakistani capital this week, its fighters were striking in Afghanistan's capital, in a brazen attack on the Ministry of Culture in the heart of Kabul. 

According to some reports, Saudi Arabia had already quietly brokered talks between the Pakistanis and the Taliban, who were said to be tiring of the al Qaeda Arabs led by Osama bin Laden.